SAN FRANCISCO — They do it in their hotel rooms or in front of everyone across a cavernous
convention hall.

They even try it on street corners.

In almost every spot imaginable last week at the Game Developers Conference, indie designers
touted their latest creations in the hope of becoming the next
Minecraft or
Gone Home.

The biggest challenge facing the growing number of independent video-game creators — those who
self-publish their quirky titles — isn’t making, distributing or even funding their creative
visions.

It’s persuading people to buy the games.

“There’s just something about human interaction,” said Chris McQuinn, a designer at
Toronto-based indie developer DrinkBox Studios. “The ultimate goal is to meet someone who might
champion your game — a fan who will go off and tell their friends about it. There’s no more
powerful message about a game than when it comes from a fan.”

McQuinn attributed much of the success of the company’s
Guacamelee! to the gamers the studio befriended at various gatherings, including the
fan-focused Penny Arcade Expo. It is one of several grass-roots tactics that indie game makers are
employing to stir up hype.

The majority of developers at the conference, the largest annual gathering of the industry in
the United States outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, classify themselves as
indie.

Advancements such as crowdfunding, easier-to-use development tools and digital distribution
services have made way for a swarm of indie creators crafting content mostly for personal computers
and mobile devices.

For every hit, though, dozens of other games get no buzz.

Despite the rise of self-publishing, most indies lack the marketing budgets and promotional
prowess that big-time publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard use to hype
expensive-to-produce titles such as
Titanfall and
Call of Duty.

During the past five years, it has worked in many cases — and the industry has taken notice.

“Making sure that a game can get discovered is the new challenge in game development,” said
Chris Charla, director at ID@Xbox, a program that Microsoft recently launched to attract developers
to independently publish games for its Xbox One console. “We’ve already solved a lot of problems in
terms of creating games and distributing games.”

After making it easier to fashion games for their latest hardware, the industry’s three major
console makers — Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo — reached out to indie developers at this year’s
conference with dedicated talks and events.

The message is clear: They don’t want indies only on PCs and smartphones.

“One of the things we’re really proud of at Xbox One is that all of the games are sold in the
same marketplace,” Charla said. “Any of the games in this room are going to be in the same place as
Titanfall on the Xbox games store. We’ve also got things like Upload Studio and Twitch
streaming, which are really viral ways of discovering games.”

Ultimately, an indie’s success comes down to the same query vexing all forms of entertainment:
Is it any good?